Presented on Wednesday, September 22, 2010 in the Barn at Quarry Farm.  One day in late 1906, seventy-one-year-old Mark Twain attended a meeting on copyright law at the Library of Congress.  The arrival of the famous author caused the usual stir - but then Twain took off his overcoat to reveal a "snow-white" tailored suit and scandalized the room.

Join biographer Michael Shelden as he recounts incidents from his recent biography of Mark Twain's last years and provides a remarkable portrait of the man himself and of the unforgettable era in American letters that, in many ways, he helped to create.

Between the pages of his books, Michael Shelden has eloquently given new life to heroes of the past: from his Pulitzer Prize finalist biography of George Orwell to his clever and witty tale of Mark Twain’s final years. In addition to his biographies of Orwell and Twain, Shelden has also published works on Graham Green and, most recently, Winston Churchill. The book has been praised by critics as a “vivid portrait” of “the young Churchill at his best, a great foretelling of what was to come when Britain and the world needed him most.” He worked for a decade as the fiction critic for the Boston Sun and served as London’s Daily Telegraph features writer more than ten years. He is a professor of English at Indiana State University.

plus-circle Add Review

comment

Reviews